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Thursday, May 10, 2012

It's Race Week Bitches

This may or may not have been an email subject to Megan and Jenn already this week. :)

The countdown to race weekend is on. But more importantly, runner bffdome and post-race celebration. Once upon a time this weekend was sub 4 or hang up your running shoes, then it was ZOMG half marathon PR, now it's.... hmmmm.

The last few weeks I've done some decent speedwork to try to give myself an idea where I was at speed-wise for this race. Unfortunately, almost all of these speed workouts were done with the addition of heat and/or humidity and/or wind. Great extra training elements, not so great in helping me determine where I'm at. After missing slash skipping my long run this weekend because I just could not bring myself to run 2 hours in 40 mph winds, I resigned to the fact that this weekend would not be a sub 1:50 PR party, glitter unicorn fart fest.

Monday I got to thinking about what my race strategy was going to be, mostly because Kyle's parents are coming to spectate and I wanted to give them good time estimations of where I was going to be on the race route. I wrote down some times, breaking up the race in to 4 sections, progressively getting faster, and it seemed doable. When I added up those times I realized it was only about 21 seconds off of my current PR. Hmmm.

And then checking the weather, it was going to be in the 40s at the 7am start time. Hmm.... flat course. Hmmm.... Mental edge is rearing its head again me thinks.

We're going to ignore the fact that hours after having this a-ha! moment I started getting intense shin pain, making me realize that I had the world's worst knot in my left calf, and the world's second worst knot in my right calf. Insert panic attack here. Fast forward 72 hours of excessive foam rolling, biofreezing, allowing Kyle to take the rolling pin to my legs while I scream in to a pillow (I'm sure my neighbors think I'm quite the catch now), stretching, downward dogging, compression sleeving, crying, and they seem to be out, for the most part. 98% is a whole host better than they were on Monday.

So we'll see how things shake out on Saturday. I think a 1:50-1:53 finish is likely, and that would put me at a top 3 all time race finish time. Most importantly I'd like to keep my focus and not give up because it hurts, it's hard, or whatever lame excuse my brain tries to throw at me. My brain is a whiny brat some times.

Post-race mimosas have already been obtained, so it's essential that these legs give me something to celebrate!

And just for funsies, here's a sweet pic of Jenn and Megan after dinner last night. We grabbed a quick bite to eat after snagging Jenn from the airport (naturally, she looked cuter than me after 40 hours of traveling, good thing I heart her....), and before dropping me off at my car, we had to make sure race day outfit coordination was a go. Why wouldn't you use the BK parking lot as your dressing room? Duh.